JIRA Issues Macro

JIRA is the issue tracking and project management system supplied by Atlassian. The Jira Issues macro allows you to display a list of issues from a JIRA site within a page in Confluence.

In other words, if you have your own JIRA site, your Confluence page can show a list of issues from your JIRA project. You can also show a list of issues from any JIRA site to which you and your readers have access.

Screenshot: Example of JIRA Issues shown on a Confluence page

On this page:

Usage

The basic syntax is:

{jiraissues:url=<URL of your JIRA XML view>}

Displaying a List of JIRA Issues on a Confluence Page

Step 1 — Obtain the URL of the Issue Filter

Log in to your JIRA system.
Go to the 'Find Issues' screen and create a new filter. Do not modify an existing filter.
Set up your search parameters and use 'View' to check the issues returned.
Once the filter is finished, go to the 'Filter View' tab located above and to the left of the 'View' button.
From the 'Filter View' tab, locate the 'Current View' links section (see example below) and find the 'XML' link.
Copy the 'XML' link to your clipboard.

Step 2 — Embed the Issue Filter URL onto your Confluence Page

Log in to your Confluence system.
Edit the page where you wish to display the list of JIRA issues.
Type the following text into a new line at the appropriate location:
```
{jiraissues:url=CONTENT}
```
Replace 'CONTENT' with the JIRA filter URL from your clipboard.
Customise the macro output by adding optional parameters. See below.
Save the Confluence page.

Parameters

The JIRA Issues macro allows the following parameters:

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
url	yes	none	The URL of the XML view of your selected issues in Jira Issue Navigator. (Note that if this URL contains the tempMax parameter, it will limit the number of results you get back. This is the case even when count is set to true. )
anonymous	no	false	If this parameter is set to 'true', JIRA will return only the issues which allow unrestricted viewing i.e. the issues which are visible to anonymous viewers, as determined by JIRA's viewing restrictions. If this parameter is omitted or set to 'false', then the results depend on how your administrator has configured the communication between JIRA and Confluence. By default, Confluence will show only the JIRA issues which the user is authorised to view. See more details below.
columns	no	By default, the following columns are shown: type key summary assignee reporter priority status resolution created updated due	A list of JIRA column names, separated by semi-colons (;). Example columns are: key, summary, type, created, updated, due, assignee, reporter, priority, status and resolution.
count	no	false	true will output the number of issues in JIRA, linking the count to the JIRA instance
cache	no	on	The macro maintains a cache of the issues which result from the JIRA query. If the 'cache' parameter is set to 'off', the cache is cleared each time the macro is reloaded. (The value 'false' also works and has the same effect as 'off'.)
baseurl	no	The value of the 'url' parameter	If you specify a 'baseurl', the link in the header, pointing to your JIRA site, will use this base URL instead of the value of the 'url' parameter. This is useful when Confluence connects to JIRA with a different URL from the one used by other users.

Example

Below is an example of some macro markup code, requesting a list of issues from the Atlassian public JIRA site:

{jiraissues:anonymous=true|url=http://jira.atlassian.com/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-xml/temp/SearchRequest.xml?&query=jiraissues&summary=true&description=true&body=true&pid=10470&tempMax=10|columns=type;key;summary}

The example code contains three parameters:

anonymous=true
url=<a long URL derived from the XML view of a JIRA filter>
columns=type;key;summary

Below are the results of the above macro markup, displayed on this Confluence page:

type	key	summary
Data cannot be retrieved due to an unexpected error. View these issues in Jira

Displaying Issues which have Restricted Viewing

Trusted communication

You don't need to add any extra parameters — see below for more detail. Provided that your administrator has set up trusted communication, Confluence and JIRA will work out the security between them, ensuring that the user will see only the issues they are authorised to see. Read the section below if you want more detail.

Maybe your JIRA instance is not visible to anonymous visitors — everyone has to log in before they can see JIRA issues. Or maybe some of the JIRA issues are restricted to viewing by certain users only. This section explains how to handle JIRA issues that have restricted viewing.

Specifying Username and Password in the JIRA URL (Not Recommended)

For Confluence 2.6.x and earlier, if your JIRA issues have restricted viewing (i.e. JIRA requires a login before allowing access to the issues), then you need to type a JIRA username and password into the macro markup code and save it onto the Confluence page.

Append the following parameters to the end of the search URL:

&os_username=MYNAME&os_password=MYPASSWORD

where MYNAME is a JIRA username and MYPASSWORD is the corresponding password for that username. This username and password should not include an ampersand (&) symbol.

Using Confluence-to-JIRA Trusted Communication (Recommended)

For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, your administrator can set up trusted communication between Confluence and JIRA. The entire process is described in the Confluence Administrator's Guide.

Here is a relevant extract from the above page:

Remove the username and password from your macro markup code

Prior to Confluence 2.7, you needed to include a username and password in the macro markup code if you wanted to display JIRA issues which had restricted viewing. Once your administrator has set up trusted communication between Confluence and JIRA, you no longer need to include a username and password in the markup code for your JIRA macros.

The following options are available for determining the issues which will be retrieved from JIRA and displayed on the Confluence page:

What you want to do

Macro parameter

URL parameter

Comments

Display the JIRA issues which the logged-in user is authorised to see. And if the user is not logged in, display only issues which allow unrestricted viewing.

Do not specify any authentication parameters. In this case, the behaviour depends on the way your administrator has set up trusted communication between JIRA and Confluence. Here is a summary of the behaviour:

If trusted communication is enabled, the authorisation will work seamlessly. When a logged-in user views your page, they will see only the JIRA issues they are allowed to see. And if they are not logged in, they will see only the issues which allow unrestricted viewing.
If trusted communication is disabled, the Confluence page will show only the JIRA issues which allow unrestricted viewing.

Ensure that Confluence will display only the JIRA issues which allow unrestricted viewing.

anonymous

Regardless of who the user is (logged in or not), the Confluence page will show only anonymously-visible issues. Confluence will not attempt to set up a trusted communication link with JIRA in this case.

Use a pre-determined username and password to access the JIRA issues.

&os_username=MYNAME&os_password=MYPASSWORD

Not recommended. Prior to Confluence 2.7, this was the only way of displaying issues with restricted viewing. For Confluence 2.7 and later, this method will still work. Confluence will not attempt to set up a trusted communication link with JIRA in this case.

Troubleshooting

HTTPS

The JIRA Issues macro can access a JIRA instance running under SSL as long as the Confluence server is set to accept the JIRA SSL certificate.

JIRA 3.7 Link Format Change

As a result of RSS feed improvements, the (outdated) JIRA Issues Macro differs between JIRA 3.6 and 3.7.

This is not a concern for users running the latest versions of Confluence and JIRA. However, users using Confluence versions older than 2.2.10 to access JIRA 3.7 must upgrade Confluence or patch the JIRA Issues macro to handle the 3.7 format.

Confluence	JIRA	Action Required
2.2.10, 2.3	Any version	None
Older than 2.2.10	3.7	Stop Confluence, open your Confluence install directory and remove the file `\WEB-INF\lib\jira3.jar`. Download the JIRA 3.7 version and rename it to `jira3.jar`
Older than 2.2.10	Older than 3.7	None

And see also:

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